Sunday, August 2, 2009

Florida!

It's been a while since I posted; business as usual. I finished IFS up in Manassas and promptly packed up my life and drove to Pensacola. I had orders to leave Quantico on July 13th but I actually pulled out with my enormous Budget truck the next day around noon. I decided that to save money on hotels that I would instead drive straight to Pensacola, a nearly 1,000 mile drive. I downloaded some audiobooks to my iPod and set out. It started out pretty slow until I realized that the truck was perfectly capable of driving 75 with the car trailer behind it (that was where the governor kicked in, probably a good thing). I stopped for dinner in Knoxville, TN around 10:30; the half-way point. Things got a little weird after this. I had started to get tired around 9 but figured I would be fine until dinner, which should wake me up as well. Well anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a fan of tobacco products, but I went with the suggestion of a friend and bought a tin of Skoal Citrus pouches and whoa, that worked. Buzzing like a mad man, I finally pulled into my apartment in Pensacola just as the sun was rising at 6:30 am. After 18 straight hours of driving I grabbed my bag and proceeded to pass out on the floor of my new apartment for about 5 hours before hitting the beach for the first time. That night we unloaded the truck, pouring sweat in the humidity.

Since July 15th I've been living here in Pensacola, not doing a whole lot. I check in every morning on base in uniform for a quick role call before hitting the gym. From there on the day is mine and I've filled it with getting appointments completed that are required to start flight school (flight physical, legal, getting measured for flight suits, etc...). I will be taking leave again from August 20-30 to go home for Bruce and Luke's weddings, which I'm standing up in. After I get back it looks like I'll be doing a whole lot of nothing until I flight school, which is supposedly going to be some time in February. There's a possibility that I might get a "stash job", working in an office somewhere, but that's not very likely, at least for the immediate future.

In other news, I adopted a puppy from the local animal shelter. He's somewhere between 1 and 2 years-old and is a mix between a golden retriever and a black lab. I named him Henry Jones Kuhnmuench to keep up with my string of Harrison Ford-related pet names. Henry is extremely well-behaved, a little too well behaved actually. I think he may have been abused by his previous owners (a lot of the signs are there, not to get too specific) and I'm still trying to draw out his inner puppy, of which I've seen flashes of, especially around Joe's two dogs. He was pretty skinny when I got him, but a diet of a canned dog food and gratuitous numbers of treats seem to be working to pack on the pounds.

Well that's all I can think of for now, hopefully updates will follow soon!